The Life of Emile Zola
Best Picture Winner: #10
Original Release Date: October 2, 1937
Rating: Passed
Runtime: 1 hour, 56 minutes
Director: William Dieterle
Quick Impressions:
This film fell flat for us, and I’m still struggling to figure out why. It isn’t a bad movie, by any means. The thing is, you watch and think, “This should be more compelling.” (My daughter and I kept saying variations of that back and forth to each other again and again. I don’t think I’ve ever said or heard the word “compelling” so often in one evening.) The barebones events of the historical incident are fascinating. Visual symbolism links key events and leaves a strong impression. Paul Muni delivers the words of Emile Zola with passion and conviction (if they are the authentic words of Zola. I like to imagine that choice turns of phrase are accurate translations of Zola’s exact words, but I’m not sure). The movie did leave me with a burning desire to read more of Zola’s work and to find out more about the Dreyfus Affair. And after watching, my daughter did remark, “I’ve noticed that some of the most important people in the world are writers.” (At least, if you listen to the words of all these screenwriters!) Naturally, I’m thrilled that she believes writers make such an invaluable contribution to civilization. But a movie about a scandal as immense as the Dreyfus Affair really should be more exciting.
At the beginning of the film, we get a lengthy, oddly worded disclaimer that goes by in a blink. I was reading it aloud, and we had to rewind to give me time to finish reading it. (You might have time to finish in your head. I didn’t try it that way.) Basically, the gist of the notice is that while the movie is based on historical events, some characters and details of lesser importance are fictitious. That’s fine. It’s what we would expect from any historical film. The problem is, the wording is so odd that we’re left with the feeling that anyone we encounter might be just a work of fiction. I find it bizarre that in a film that centers on shady missives and forged documents, we’re given such an incredibly brief look at this oddly phrased disclaimer.
The Plot:
Paris, 1862, Emile Zola begins his adult life as a poor writer living in squalor with his friend and roommate, painter Paul Cezanne. Despite his family’s efforts to secure him more respectable employment, Zola passionately believes he must be a voice of the people, a voice for justice. He’s happy to lose job and security if it gives him more time for muckraking, his true vocation. Then he meets a young woman he calls Nana, who inspires him to write his first commercially successful book. Thirty years pass in a blink, and we find Zola transformed into the very sort of man he used to despise, smug, complacent, wealthy, traditionally successful, embraced by the establishment. This all changes when Zola finds himself mixed up in the notorious Dreyfus Affair. Someone has been passing French military secrets to the Germans. Hastily, the high-ranking military officers blame Captain Alfred Dreyfus. They convict him without a shred of real evidence, ship him off to Devil’s Island, and later suppress evidence exposing the real culprit to avoid scandal. Dreyfus’s wife begs Zola to champion her husband’s cause. He does. Then he himself is put on trial for his actions. Is he a champion of justice or a traitor to France?
The Good:
Art design and set decoration certainly stand out in this movie. I looked to see if the film won any Oscars for its outstanding sets and recurrent visual motifs. It did not. But it was nominated for Best Art Direction.
I wish I lived in Emile Zola’s house. I would devote my life to dinner theater, hosting murder mystery dinners or performing elaborate comedies while my guests watched in delight. Every time the movie took us inside Zola’s house, I would think, “I could use this set to put on a much more entertaining play.” It does feel like the set of a stage play (although it also reminded me a great deal of Disney’s Pollyanna, possibly because the stories take place in a similar era, late 1890s Paris versus 1910 America The furniture is so similar, particularly the lamps).
Actually, Zola’s house would make a fantastic set for You Can’t Take It With You (which both my sister and I did in high school, and which happens to be our next Best Picture winner). I would love to know who acquired all of those props, all of that furniture. Who found it? Where was it? How much did it cost? Were some pieces created for the movie? Ordinarily I’m not all that interested in such things, but the props and set design steal the show here. In its degree of high-priced clutter, Zola’s house resembles the setting of Rian Johnson’s Knives Out.
The make-up is pretty good, too. (Well, maybe it’s not because you notice it. Perhaps better make-up would not draw attention to itself.) I have a fascination with old age make-up. (It delights me now that I could convincingly play a woman of forty with no make-up. Think of it! I could go out to the store right now, and everyone would believe I was a woman of forty!) Paul Muni literally disappears into the aging Emile Zola. To achieve his look, I’d need to spend a decade in the make-up chair and use four-thousand gallons of spirit gum. (But I think Muni’s beard is real, even though it looks fake.) Even better than Muni’s make-up is the transformation of Joseph Schildkraut who plays Dreyfus. A few years on Devil’s Island drastically change the man. Though he has few lines, I think Schildkraut might actually give the best performance in the film, and he did win the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor.
The visual motifs in this film are so persistent. As my daughter put it, “The fire is so symbolic in this movie.” It certainly is. I’m curious how these filmmakers would begin a Joan of Arc biopic. In the beginning of this movie, Zola scorns bloated, lazy, comfortable writers and burns their books for warmth. Then he begins to choke on the smoke. But later on, we look (from the vantage point of the fireplace) through the flames to see him sitting comfortably in his room as just such a man he used to despise. Then, when he decides to take the Dreyfus case, he is burned in effigy in the streets. And then, of course, in the end of the film…let’s just say his house needs repair. (I won’t spoil it for you, in case you think Emile Zola is still alive today.) Fire may even appear in even more instances than these. I can’t remember. But the filmmakers use it to tell a complete story of his life.
Umbrellas are a big deal, too. Throughout his life, Zola has a love-hate relationship with them. He goes from someone with no decent umbrella, to someone who can afford dozens, to someone all the umbrella-affording populace begins to despise…It’s a very visual movie.
Of course, the spoken words are quite important, too. (I wish I knew how many were Zola’s! I’ve never been particularly interested in reading Zola’s writing before, but I plan to now.) The film did win Best Screenplay, and Muni won Best Actor. For his passionate and articulate delivery of his lines in the second half of the film, Muni certainly deserves the honor. But I’m not as sold on his performance overall. I’m somewhat baffled that people in 1938 were so impressed by it. What Muni does as the young Zola is interesting, but then the movie just skips ahead 30 years, and suddenly he looks like Albert Finney playing Scrooge. But he does deliver those impassioned speeches well.
Best Scene Visually:
Best is the look at the comfortable Zola and his wife through the flames, as if the camera is in the fireplace. I’m also thrilled with that umbrella scene as everyone gathers because of the scandal of the trial. Also terrific is the scene of bugs eating Dreyfus’s copy of one of Zola’s book. (At first I thought they were maggots, but then termites seemed like more likely suspects to eat a book. I need to take another look at the brief scene.) The title of the book is Paris.
Best Action Sequence:
New life is breathed into the film (and into its protagonist) when the mob gathers in the streets to burn Zola in effigy.
Best Scene:
The courtroom sequence is more than one scene. It takes up an entire chunk of the film. But during Zola’s trial, the movie suddenly comes alive. My daughter and I mutually agreed that the film was not “compelling” until this part.
Probably best is Zola’s impassioned plea to the jury (and by extension to history, and even to us the audience watching a film about him in 2020). Also fantastic, though, is the moment when the defense attempts to call the high-ranking officers in turn, and we hear (case-by-case) that literally nobody can testify. This is a lovely, melodic look at organized corruption.
The Negatives:
I have nothing against Gale Sondergaard. I’ve seen and liked her in other roles. And I have nothing against Madame Dreyfus. Her husband was scapegoated and abused by his superiors in a shocking, disgusting cover-up. But I absolutely can’t stand Gale Sondergaard as Madame Dreyfus. Her performance in this film is like nails on a chalkboard to me. Explaining just what I mean is difficult. It’s more a visceral knee-jerk. She appears, pleading for her husband, and I think, “I don’t like her.” The one moment where I enjoyed her performance came during Zola’s trial. She’s called to testify, and then the court will not allow any of the questions, and she’s not permitted to speak. She sits down in frustration, mumbling that she can’t even express her overflowing gratitude to Zola. In this scene, I think she’s good. The rest of the time, I just can’t stand her performance. I realize the situation is dire, and the stakes are high. She has cause for despair, yet, never gives up. Still, to me, her line delivery sounds melodramatic. It just makes me cringe, and I hate it. (Now I imagine that the surviving members of Sondergaard’s family are the only people reading this. It’s quite possibly my fault that I don’t like the performance, not the actress’s. Still.)
In general, this film is extremely melodramatic. At one point after the trial, someone pulls Zola aside and points to an enormous image of Christ on the Cross, then compares Zola to Jesus. This feels so heavy-handed to me. I mean, can’t we draw this conclusion ourselves? (Of course, when Jesus was sentenced to death, he didn’t run away to England—except maybe in some spurious variations of Grail legends. So that is quite a difference.) But we are already able to see for ourselves that Zola is speaking the truth to a corrupt society that refuses to hear him and condemns him for his honesty. He does seem a bit like other truth tellers who irritate the establishment, a bit like Jesus, a bit like Socrates (who also did not run away when he was sentenced to death). (And I’m not slamming Zola. What he did was courageous, no doubt. It is certainly noble to use your loud voice for a just cause, especially when you risk your reputation in the process.) It’s the film’s tone that irritates me. (And the film’s trailer is something else entirely. It shows magazine after magazine—just their covers—and boasts that all of these magazines agree that this is the most important film of the year.)
That’s one thing I wondered as I watched. What makes the Dreyfus Affair so important to American film goers in the late 1930s? What specifically? I know that the historical Dreyfus was Jewish (although this is not mentioned in the film). So perhaps the desire to speak out against rising antisemitism is at play (except that the movie does not tell us Dreyfus is Jewish). Zola’s noble words (especially his take on preserving society through words and ideas rather than military action) are edifying in any era, but I still think there’s some more particular reason that audiences at the time embraced this movie, and I’m going to find out.
As I watched, I couldn’t help thinking that I could make a better version of the film, using only the material I learned from the film. (This is odd because I have never made a movie, and usually I don’t feel this way.) This is one movie I’d love to see remade. The most obvious way to improve it is to focus on the Dreyfus Affair instead of Emile Zola. The movie itself shows us that Zola does his best work when he focuses on other people and their particular stories. Then it makes the baffling choice to focus on Zola. The part of the movie that deals specifically with the Dreyfus Affair is far more exciting and compelling than the rest of the movie.
My daughter found the movie heavy-handed, too. She said, “I don’t like how much they’re like, ‘He’s a big jerk. He’s a hypocrite. He’s the man he never wanted to be.’ And then they’re like, ‘Oh yea, he’s a hero. He’s ripping up the letter.’ It’s too dramatic.” I completely agree with her. Everything is so heavy-handed and clunky showing us Zola’s comfortable hypocrisy and his about-face back to passion for the plight of the abused. We don’t get a real transition to his hypocrisy or away from it. To me, this often felt like a made-for-TV Disney movie or an educational film made for children. Old Zola and Young Zola seem like two different people. If the movie is about Emile Zola, then why do we not see more psychological transformation? (I joked about Albert Finney’s Scrooge earlier, but in Scrooge, we do see the young man become hardened, and the hardened man soften. It’s not just a light switch like this.) If the movie really is about Zola, give us the internal Zola. If not, change the name to The Dreyfus Affair and start at the exciting part.
Overall:
The Life of Emile Zola is certainly a well-made film, but I don’t think it’s aged particularly well. It did, however, make me curious to read the works of Emile Zola, and to learn more about the Dreyfus Affair. And it convinced my daughter that writers change the world, so there’s that!